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Maintaining my dignity is so important for me.
Amanda Lindhout -
I don't only long for the thrill of being in the middle of a war, I must understand it; I must make other people understand.
Amanda Lindhout
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Somalia is an important story in the world, and it needed to be told.
Amanda Lindhout -
The road to recovery will not always be easy, but I will take it one day at a time, focusing on the moments I've dreamed about for so long.
Amanda Lindhout -
I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive.
Amanda Lindhout -
I went through an extremely trying ordeal, but I never forgot the world outside was a beautiful place.
Amanda Lindhout -
I made a vow to myself while I was a hostage that if I were lucky enough to live and to get out of Somalia, I would do something meaningful with my life - and specifically something that would be meaningful in the country where I'd lost my freedom.
Amanda Lindhout -
I must try desperately to absorb all information I can about the Middle East. I want to excel. I want to speak articulately about the politics of the Middle East and its religion.
Amanda Lindhout
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I'm afraid of the dark, but I choose to sleep in the dark. I can fall right to sleep with the lights on. But I want to be someone who can sleep in the dark, so that's the choice that I make.
Amanda Lindhout -
It's difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.
Amanda Lindhout -
With awareness come responsibility and choice.
Amanda Lindhout -
Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I'd gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.
Amanda Lindhout -
When you see a 14-year-old boy who has never known what peace looks like for a day in his life, there's part of you as a human being that feels some degree, you can say, compassion for the fact that these boys have known war, famine, violence and death from the day they were born.
Amanda Lindhout -
Sometimes it's nice for people not to know anything about me.
Amanda Lindhout
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The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?
Amanda Lindhout -
After spending 460 days as a hostage, I did emerge a fundamentally changed person. But I think, like everyone does as they grow older and probably wiser, I can look back at my earlier life - my history, my mistakes, the joy I felt as a young woman traveling the world - with some objectivity and even some humor.
Amanda Lindhout -
I am so proud to be a Canadian.
Amanda Lindhout -
The big-time journalists generally had kidnapping insurance through their news organizations. Usually, it would pay for a crisis response company to help negotiate for a hostage's release. Freelancers most often had none.
Amanda Lindhout -
Because travel has always been such a vital part of myself and so essential to who I am, I have made the decision to continue to put myself back out into the world. And that's not an easy decision to make.
Amanda Lindhout -
I never felt an obligation to say every single terrible thing that happened to me.
Amanda Lindhout
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I know firsthand how critical support systems are.
Amanda Lindhout -
What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.
Amanda Lindhout -
You have a responsibility to move your dreams forward, no matter what.
Amanda Lindhout -
For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms... would give out, and I'd fall to the ground.
Amanda Lindhout